Half Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer [43]
Herod pulled a flat metal ruler from the leg of his jeans, sliding it between the window and frame. He jiggled the ruler for a few moments and the car door lock popped.
‘Clear,’ he shouted, stepping back.
Genie stopped the watch. ‘Fifteen seconds. Not bad. Keep practising.’
She noticed us coming through the back gate.
‘Ah, will you look who it is. Well, boys, any developments in the case?’
‘We’ve established a link between the assault and the robberies,’ replied Red. The exact words I had used with April.
‘Well put,’ I said.
Genie held out the stopwatch. ‘The clock is ticking, boys. Better get back to business. Red, you haven’t rehearsed since this mess started, and we have a title to defend.’
I followed Red into the house.
‘Title?’
‘School talent show. I was Elvis last year. The Early Years. This year I’m doing Vegas.’
I remembered. Another reason why the girls loved Red. He could sing and, even more importantly, he would sing.
When we reached the bedroom, my iBook’s browser was open on an Internet shopping page.
‘Were you on the net?’ I asked Red.
Before he could answer, Genie pushed into the room past us.
‘I was – just buying some clothes from Paris,’ she explained, quitting the site.
‘Don’t you need a credit card for that?’
‘I have one,’ she said, tossing me the plastic rectangle. ‘Maxed out, I’m afraid.’
This didn’t bother me much, until I noticed the name on the card.
‘This is my dad’s!’ I blurted. ‘You stole it from my room.’
‘Hey, we’re family now, Watson. What’s yours is mine.’
‘But this card is for emergencies only.’
Genie hopped up from the chair and grabbed my waving hands. She waltzed us both around the room. ‘It is an emergency, Watson. The autumn—winter season is upon us and I’m still wearing spring-summer clothes.’
I was still twirling when Genie sneaked out the door.
‘You need to watch my sister,’ commented Red, steering me to the chair. ‘She’d steal the ham out of your sandwich.’
I ran a quick virus sweep on the iBook and found that Genie had managed to infect the hard drive with a minor virus. I ran the disk-repair program, hoping that none of my files had been corrupted. Red sat, watching the program run, for about four seconds before his natural energy began bursting out through his extremities. First his knee began jittering, then his toes, then his fingers began drumming a beat on the desk.
‘Red, please.’
‘What?’
‘I’m working here.’
‘I’m not stopping you. Anyway, what work? You’re looking at a screen. How long are you going to be?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you have a game of hurling?’
Red elbowed me. ‘Someone stole my hurl, detective.’
I unstrapped my cast, laying it on the desk. ‘That’s right. How could I forget?’ My arm was still bruised, but the pain only flared if I clenched my fist. So I avoided clenching my fist.
Red’s entire being was eager for action. ‘There must be something I can do?’
I pointed at the mass of files on the floor. ‘Those are the September case files I have to go through. If you could weed out a few red herrings, that would save us a lot of time.’
‘Red herrings?’
‘Our criminal is in there somewhere, but so is every other criminal in Lock. We’re looking for unusual crimes, with no obvious motive, possibly teenage or young victims.’
Red thought for a second. ‘OK,’ he said scooping the files into his arms. ‘Give me a few minutes.’
A few minutes? It had taken me hours to get through the first half of the pile.
‘Good luck. But investigation is slow work. It could take a while.’
‘We’ll see, Half Moon,’ said Red, pulling the door closed behind him with his foot.
Red seemed to take the energy out of the room when he left. I suddenly felt incredibly tired. I felt as though I’d been beaten inside and out. Which, of course, I had. I put my head in my hands and tried to fend off thoughts of home. At the very least, my family would be feeling as bad as I was. Was this what being a detective entailed? Where were the lightning flashes of intuition that I had expected?
The computer beeped and I sat up. All clear on the hard drive. I selected